


Domesticity

by alorarose



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alorarose/pseuds/alorarose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://ouat-exchange.livejournal.com/">2013 ouat_exchange</a>.</p><p>Prompt:  An FTL AU where Rumpel, Belle, and Bae are a family </p><p>Belle and Baelfire bond while cooking dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domesticity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ultra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/gifts).



Baelfire watched Belle as she puttered around; it looked like she was planning on making supper, or at least attempting it. His father had left earlier in the day, words of having business to attend to coming off his tongue, but Bae knew what that really meant. His father hadn't been the same since becoming the Dark One and things had been difficult. His father would disagree, but then again, he wasn't listening to anything Bae said anyway. He didn't know the full details behind Belle coming to live with them, and neither his father nor Belle said much about it, but he suspected it was because of one of his father's deals. There weren't any other reasons that made sense and Belle not running off made even less sense. It was like she _wanted_ to stay. He shook his head and sighed to himself. He continued to watch her, trying to make it look like he was simply reading his book. 

Belle blew at her hair as a lock fell into her face - again - and she tried to avoid touching it with her flour-covered hands. Bread had always seemed so easy when she was hiding in the castle kitchens to get away from her nanny and waiting for Cook to slip her a bit of cake, but clearly she didn't have Cook's arms...her hands felt like they were going to fall off!

Bae smothered a snicker, attempting to seem like it was due to what he was reading. Belle's expression reminded him of how Morraine had acted when her mother taught her how to bake. His friend had ended up covered head to toe in flour and it had taken days to get all of it out of her hair. She'd smacked his shoulder hard when he laughed at how she looked. "I thought baking bread would have been beneath you, m'lady."

"Of course not," she turned to smile at him over her shoulder, "although I'll admit I'm a little out of practice. Still, I promise I'll do my best. How hard can a simple dinner be?"

"Shouldn't be hard," he smiled. "If you've done it before. Why are you even trying?"

"Because I want to be useful? Because I ought to be able to do it? Because I want to find a way to thank your father for what he's done, which he doesn't think he deserves thanking for?"

"And what is it he's done?" Bae asked, wondering if maybe he'd get some answers.

"Saved me, saved you...saved my people," Belle turned back to the dough, shook out her arms, and went back to kneading, trying to get the proto-bread to look a little less lumpy.

He sighed, gently closing his book, and setting it down on the table. He had ended the Ogre war for _everyone_ , that still didn't explain why Belle was here. "Do you miss them? Your family?"

"I...well, I suppose yes, some days I do miss my father, and of course I'll always miss my mother, but your papa told me that even he can't fix that, so… And I do miss my people, although I certainly don't miss Gaston," she snorted.

"Who's Gaston?" he stood up and made his way over to the counter she was working on. He bit his bottom lip, glancing down to watch her hands work through the dough before looking back at her face. 

"My fiance, or he was," she shrugged, "not by my choice. Women are often bargaining chips…" then she bit her lip, "I'm sorry, that isn't fair. I agreed, after all. But had I stayed, I could never have been truly happy married to him."

"Why would you agree to something like that? Sorry I'm being nosy," Bae shook his head and frowned. "You don't have to answer that."

"No, it's alright," she smiled, "Gaston is a strong knight and a leader of men. I was what was promised to him to get his agreement to fight for us. That's how the world works, Bae, there's always a price to be paid."

"That, I know," he said softly, his eyes drifting back to the dough. "Is that why you're still here?"

"I'm here for that reason partly, I suppose," she admitted, "but with your papa it's different. He...he doesn't seem to have any expectations of me other than that I keep the house for him, and he allows me far more freedom than he ought. Besides, I swore to go with him and I'm not going to go back on my word."

Bae watched her carefully, thinking on the things she'd said. He liked that she wanted to keep her word, not matter what it was, and it made something inside of him settle. "Why aren't you afraid of him?"

"I probably should be, and sometimes I am," she admitted, "when the darkness gets too strong, but...that darkness isn't who he is, it's...well, it's part of him but not all of him, and the other part of him, the part inside, it makes me trust that I will be safe."

"I think you're seeing something that isn't there," Bae said honestly. "I used to wish it was there."

"It's there," she shook her head, glancing down at the dough. It would have to do, she decided, as it certainly wasn't getting any better and her hands felt like they were going to fall off. "It's well-hidden, but it's there. Otherwise why would he even let me live once he'd gotten me back and realized just how useless I am?"

He drew in a deep breath. He wasn't sure he wanted her to get him to hope again. He'd been disappointed once already, he wasn't sure he could handle it again. "You need a few more drops of water," he told her. "It'll help smooth out the lumps."

"Oh, okay," she glanced over at him, then went to dip a small bowl into the ewer of water and sprinkled a bit onto the dough. "Thank you."

"He likes it when the bread is hard," he watched her hands work the dough again. "It holds up better with whatever you put on it."

"That makes sense," she nodded, "once the dough is fixed I'm thinking I can get a chicken ready to go in the oven and they can bake at the same time. It's already plucked and ready, I just have to season it...do you know where your papa keeps the spices?"

"Mm," he nodded, walking over to the cupboard. He pulled out a shallow box that held all the spices and set it down near the chicken. "Did you pluck it yourself?" he laughed softly, looking at the spots where feathers still stuck out of the bird. 

"Of course I did! I'm doing this for him, after all, why would I have someone else do the work? That wouldn't be right, not if...not if I'm showing how useful I can be." She bit her lip, "I was thinking I just need to...um...singe it, right? To get the last of the feathers?"

"Should work," he nodded. He pulled the bottle of rosemary out of the box and set it down. "Use this one. He always loved how it made the house smell."

"Alright, thank you," Belle smiled. She put the dough back into the bowl, covered it with a cloth and set it close to the oven to rise, then looked helplessly at her hands. "I'd better wash up before I try to deal with the chicken."

Bae couldn't help a chuckle at the look on her face. "Not unless you want a breaded chicken."

She giggled. "Nope, that wasn't the plan," she doused her hands in a bowl of water and scrubbed at them, frowning as the flour on them only got more and more doughy.

"Water's just going to make it worse!" Bae's laugh was full now. He grabbed a clean rag and started rubbing her hands to get all the dough off. It came off in clumps and was impossible to not drop all over the floor. "Maybe we should have done this outside."

"Next time," she agreed, "we are definitely doing this outside." She pried her fingers apart, glops of dough between them making it look like she had fins instead of hands.

Bae couldn't help the laughter that came out of him. He dropped the rag and used his fingers to help get the dough off, but the result was that his hands got covered in the process. "This isn't going to work," he said between chortles.

"I think I've trapped both of us," she laughed helplessly, "um...maybe if we dip our hands into the flour barrel to cut down on the water?"

"I think we'll just end up with more dough but we can try," he shook his hands in an attempt to get as much water off them as he could then carefully put them into the flour barrel. He grabbed a handful of the soft powdery stuff and rubbed his hands gently.

She followed suit, rubbing, and then rubbing some more, and laughed gleefully as drier, rolled-up fragments of dough began to fall off her fingers.

"We need to sweep this up before papa gets home," Bae said, although he was still laughing. "There's flour _everywhere_."

"Don't worry, that's definitely in the plans," she nodded, "but first we have to get it all off our hands. Otherwise this will be a never-ending project."

"You're not like the others," he commented casually as he worked on cleaning off his hands. "The Lords and Ladies, I mean. Not that I've met many, but… You're different."

"Well thank you," she dipped into a little curtsy, brushing helplessly at her skirts as she realized that she had just gotten flour and dough all over them, "Father always used to say that those in positions of power had to remember not to forget themselves. There is a tendency to think we're above everyone else, but to be truly noble, one must remember that one is a servant of the people just as much as they are servants to us."

"A lot of people don't share that thinking," he nibbled his lip as he dusted the rest of the flour off his hands with another rag. "He… papa smiles around you."

"Probably he's amused by my incompetence," Belle sighed as she finally picked at the last bits of dried dough off her palms.

"Maybe," Bae dropped the thought, relocating to the chicken and picking at the remaining feathers. "Do you even know how to season a chicken?"

"Um...you crush the herbs and rub them on the skin and inside the body," Belle nodded, remembering what she'd seen Cook doing, "but first I have to singe those feathers off. Here…" She reached past him and grabbed the chicken by the legs, almost dropping it before tightening her grip. "Maybe I should tie the legs together so I can hold on better," she pondered.

"Or put it on something," he suggested. "You weren't just going to put it in the fire, were you?"

"I was going to hold it over the flames? Just briefly, to singe the feathers," she explained.

"Maybe if we each hold a leg?"

"Yes, I think that'll work. We'll have to move fast though, so we'll do it on a count of three, then move it out, check it, and decide if we need to do another round."

Bae nodded, waited for her to count to three, then rushed the bird over to the fire. He kept as firm a grip on the leg as he could, even grabbing with both hands when it started to slip.

Belle's grip began to slip too, and her cramped hands just couldn't hold on. She cried out in dismay as the chicken fell into the fire and, without thinking about the consequences of her actions, reached down into the fire to try to rescue their dinner, not even hearing the door open as Rumpelstiltskin returned home.

"No!" Bae gasped, his hands flinching back from the fire, then reaching out to grab Belle's arms, yanking her away.

"What are you doing, you foolish girl!" Rumpel raged, flashing over to the two of them and grabbing Belle by the shoulders.

Belle yelped in pain as she suddenly realized that her hands were burnt, and that his fingers were digging into her arms almost bruisingly hard. "I was cooking dinner," she whimpered, biting her lip to hold back a sudden spate of tears. She was stronger than that.

"Papa, stop! You're hurting her!" Bae yelled. "It was an accident!"

"I'm fine," Belle insisted, "don't worry," She forced a smile for Rumpel and then turned to smile at Bae. "although I am sorry about the chicken."

"Chicken?" Rumpel was confused and looked to Bae with a tilted head. He loosed his grip on Belle's shoulders.

"We were making dinner," Bae wavered under the scrutiny of his father. "We needed to singe off the last of the feathers and the bird slipped."

"I suppose I wasn't thinking about it and I just automatically reached after it," Belle blushed, "foolish, yes, I know." She reached up without thinking to brush a bit of hair out of her face and couldn't bite back the whimper as even the air moving against her hand made it hurt.

"Not so fine as all that, it would seem," Rumpel raised an eyebrow, "No, sit, let me see," he poofed a chair next to them and gently sat Belle in it, taking both wrists in a careful grip and turning her hands up to examine the burns. "No, certainly not fine."

Bae watched his father carefully. He hadn't needed to use magic to bring a chair over when they weren't far from the table, he didn't need magic for a lot of things he used it for. It annoyed Bae, but Belle was more important at the moment. Her hands were badly burned and he looked at her face, wondering how much pain she was hiding behind the barely grimacing expression. 

"I'm sorry I'm so much trouble," Belle sighed, "really, we were hoping dinner would be a _good_ surprise."

"Well, let's just fix these burns first," Rumpel ran his fingers with delicate precision over each of her fingers in turn, the purple-black smoke of his magic leaving unmarred flesh in its wake, "then we'll talk about dinner and nice surprises, shall we?"

Bae couldn't hide the relief he felt over Belle's burns being healed. It was when his father did good things like this that he could sometimes see the man he once was. "Does it hurt?" he asked her, his eyes searching her hands for any sign of more burns.

"It's much better now," Belle assured him, "are you alright?" Then she shook her head and laughed, "no, I'm sure you are. You're far too wise a boy to do something silly like try to reach into a fire after a lost chicken."

"Would that be the chicken over there on the platter?" Rumpel grinned as he made a grandiose gesture and the now-fairly-charred chicken appeared in the middle of the dining table.

"Yes," Belle groaned at the sight of it, "that's the one." She shook her head, "at least there's still the bread dough...so I suppose dinner isn't entirely ruined." She glanced over to where she had set the dough to rise and cried out in distress. Somehow what had been a small amount of dough had turned into something that looked more like it had crawled up out of the swamps and was trying to take over the counter, burbling as it grew.

Bae looked over at the bread and covered his mouth to stifle his laughter. "Too much yeast," he gasped out. "Entirely ruined," he nodded, a grin spreading across his face. "I don't think looking like a monster will make the bread taste bad though. We'll have enough for quite a while."

"I guess so," Belle laughed. "but what are we going to bake it in? And what are we having for dinner besides bread?"

"No fear, I think we can probably manage on just the bread tonight," Rumpel smiled, "if you'd like, I can go out and pretend to be busy for another half an hour and when I come back, I can be surprised all over again."

Bae's head tilted to the side, watching his father curiously. "It's okay," he said softly. "Don't go."

"Thank you for the offer," Belle smiled at him, "but I'm pretty sure the cat is well out of the bag and climbing the drapes at this point."

"Then will the two of you accept a little help?"

Bae glanced at the burnt chicken then back at his father. "If help means we're going over to the tavern and buying a meal, then yes."

"That is possible, but I was more thinking about actually making do with what you've already started here. It isn't beyond repair, I promise."

"Alright," Bae was still hesitant. "Just no magic, papa."

"No magic, I promise," he put an arm around Bae's shoulders, "just the usual magic of the kitchen." He raised an eyebrow at Belle, "now, come, let's deal with that bread monster before it reaches the floor."


End file.
